Back in February, I was asked by my friend Dave Cornthwaite if I wanted to help him document his latest adventure – a sailing trip from Cabo, Mexico to Honolulu Hawaii. The brief of the trip was to document the experience using video and stills which would be used by Dave to promote his adventures and by Pangaea Explorations to help promote their journeys. The journey would take part on board Sea Dragon, a 72ft ex-racing yacht run by Pangaea Explorations and would be crewed by 3 professionals and 7 amateurs, myself and Dave included. Sea Dragon is a research vessel used for formal scientific and conservation expeditions as well as sailing voyages and occasional private charter.
It promised to be challenging, not only because I haven’t used a DSLR to record video before, but also because we would be on a small yacht with 10 other people who had never met each other in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for over 2 weeks, without any sight of land. Happily, everybody on board turned out to be just as mad as each other in taking part in this adventure and some good friendships were developed along the way. My Canon 5D Mark II also performed amazingly well in the conditions and I was very happy with the ease of use and quality of the video which came from it.
The journey took 16 days to complete, with 3 teams working around the clock to get us there as fast as possible.
It was an amazing journey, a once in a lifetime opportunity and I would like to thank Dave and Pangaea for asking me along and also a big thank you to all my crew mates for making it an unforgettable trip.
If you want to read more about Dave’s journeys (he is currently pedalling a bike car from Memphis to Miami) then visit his website www.davecornthwaite.com or facebook.com/expedition1000. For more about Pangaea Explorations work their website is www.panexplore.com.
